What's your minimum distance from road/trail that you find elk?

[jonnycoder]

One thing I've learned after to moving to Idaho and elk hunting the past two seasons in OTC units is that elk always keep a minimum distance from roads. There is an exception, which is elk travel, and elk do cross forest roads in the early morning if everything is quiet.

When elk get pushed around by mid September, I've noticed they bed in smaller secluded pockets and one of those was a few hundred meters from a forest road, such as a road that is open in Sept but closed during Oct rifle.

I drew a deer tag for November near Riggins and the 50% success rate for that unit seems to come from road hunting. I found 5 deer carcasses near a closed road! I didn't glass a single deer until the 2nd to last day. I think elk hunting is the opposite, you won't ever find them road hunting unless you come across them in the middle of the night near a road!

What are your thoughts regarding finding elk a certain minimum distance from roads during daylight?

 

[Soj51hopeful]

You most certainly will come across them on the road during the day it’s just the exception not the norm. Gotta spend a lot of time out there to get lucky like that but it happens.

 

[jonnycoder]

You most certainly will come across them on the road during the day it’s just the exception not the norm. Gotta spend a lot of time out there to get lucky like that but it happens.

During rut and post rut? I do see elk by the road during spring bear season when it is overcast.
My go-to is 1/2 mile from a road during archery elk season.

 

[BigAntlerGetter]

There’s no rule, there’s no minimum distance, roads you may have to get a bit further but also I’ve found elk bedded 75 yards off a road cause it’s an ignored distance. I’ve seen elk bedded, bugling goin nuts, feeding ect 75 yards off a trail in a meadow that you document see into, as hunters were walking up the trail. The bugling was evening before but next mid morning they didn’t care and those hunters hiked right past and went 2 miles further before they even started glassing and hunting.

The mentality now a days of X miles before you will even find elk is pushing so many guys deep that it pushes elk closer. I have one camp that’s 1 mile from the trailhead, and we’ve harvested at least 1 elk out of it every single time we’ve used it.

You can’t overlook good habitat just because it’s to “close”


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[WeiserBucks]

You most certainly will come across them on the road during the day it’s just the exception not the norm. Gotta spend a lot of time out there to get lucky like that but it happens.

Truth.

 

[S.Clancy]

There is a certain road in MT that I hunted a lot in archery 5-10 yrs ago. We were into multiple bulls within a couple hundred yards of the road. I happened to hunt that same area during rifle when a foot of snow hit. Over the next couple days I counted almost 20 elk gut piles in the ditch.

Another area late season we shot a cow elk out in the flats. I watched where the rest of the herd was going and thought to myself "huh, it looks like they are running right towards the road". 5 min later we hear gunshots and the herd literally runs right back to us and keeps going to the west. We pack the cow back to the truck and on the drive out there are 3-4 gut piles basically on the road.

There's a reason people road hunt, it works, sometimes.

 

[Wapiti151]

Focus on pressure, not roads as the thing to avoid. Often, the two do NOT correlate….often they do. There’s no rule or certainty of where animals will be or will not be.
These are animals, doing animal things to try and not die. They aren’t actively trying to outsmart us and don’t know rifle season starts in Oct.

They are wizards at hiding in plain sight, change habits based on instincts, etc but just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. You’d be surprised what’s hanging out 100yds from that road you avoid just over a knoll that completely hides them from every truck that drives by. Most people are just too lazy, or “think” the animals are too smart to get out of the truck and go look at it.

 

[roadrunner]

Minimum distance is where you find them.

 

[streamerfish]

I think its all habitat and area specific frankly.

I can drive around on paved roads in agricultural area's and see elk from the road all the time.

I think elk are where they want to be, or where they get pushed into. And roads being near or far don't come into the equation.

 

[taskswap]

The only hard rule I've consistently seen is if the road runs along public and private land. In that case, 99.999% of the time they'll be on the private.

 

[streamerfish]

The only hard rule I've consistently seen is if the road runs along public and private land. In that case, 99.999% of the time they'll be on the private.

Unless its your private land.....

About 10yrs ago....rather infamously, on a "main" paved road that leads to alot of public elk hunting areas where I hunt, a herd of about 50 elk set up camp, bedded against a knoll, about 50 yards off the road, and about 400 yards from public property. A few raghorns and a couple of spikes in the group. On opening morning.

Needless to say it caused a traffic jam driving up the road. And some people trying to holler at them to get them to move to the public land.....Game cop camped out on our property in plain view to make sure nobody got a little greedy....

 

[Laramie]

We used to see large numbers of elk 1-3 miles in. Now that GPS units are the norm and allow more hunters to go deep, elk are so scattered that it is challenging to predict. Sometimes there is higher hunting pressure 3 miles in than there is 0-1 miles in. As others have said, they are where you find them.

 

[Blove92]

I typically do not see heavy elk signs until I’m a minimum of a quarter to half mile in on country roads and a mile or more on typical roads.

 

[cnelk]

My minimum distance has been 300yds for killing elk and 1mi seems to be my max for the past 15 years with punching tags most years